No Arabic abstract
Deep neural network (DNN) generally takes thousands of iterations to optimize via gradient descent and thus has a slow convergence. In addition, softmax, as a decision layer, may ignore the distribution information of the data during classification. Aiming to tackle the referred problems, we propose a novel manifold neural network based on non-gradient optimization, i.e., the closed-form solutions. Considering that the activation function is generally invertible, we reconstruct the network via forward ridge regression and low rank backward approximation, which achieve the rapid convergence. Moreover, by unifying the flexible Stiefel manifold and adaptive support vector machine, we devise the novel decision layer which efficiently fits the manifold structure of the data and label information. Consequently, a jointly non-gradient optimization method is designed to generate the network with closed-form results. Eventually, extensive experiments validate the superior performance of the model.
Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have become increasingly popular in computer vision, natural language processing, and other areas. However, training and fine-tuning a deep learning model is computationally intensive and time-consuming. We propose a new method to improve the performance of nearly every model including pre-trained models. The proposed method uses an ensemble approach where the networks in the ensemble are constructed by reassigning model parameter values based on the probabilistic distribution of these parameters, calculated towards the end of the training process. For pre-trained models, this approach results in an additional training step (usually less than one epoch). We perform a variety of analysis using the MNIST dataset and validate the approach with a number of DNN models using pre-trained models on the ImageNet dataset.
Gradient descent finds a global minimum in training deep neural networks despite the objective function being non-convex. The current paper proves gradient descent achieves zero training loss in polynomial time for a deep over-parameterized neural network with residual connections (ResNet). Our analysis relies on the particular structure of the Gram matrix induced by the neural network architecture. This structure allows us to show the Gram matrix is stable throughout the training process and this stability implies the global optimality of the gradient descent algorithm. We further extend our analysis to deep residual convolutional neural networks and obtain a similar convergence result.
Over-parameterization of neural networks benefits the optimization and generalization yet brings cost in practice. Pruning is adopted as a post-processing solution to this problem, which aims to remove unnecessary parameters in a neural network with little performance compromised. It has been broadly believed the resulted sparse neural network cannot be trained from scratch to comparable accuracy. However, several recent works (e.g., [Frankle and Carbin, 2019a]) challenge this belief by discovering random sparse networks which can be trained to match the performance with their dense counterpart. This new pruning paradigm later inspires more new methods of pruning at initialization. In spite of the encouraging progress, how to coordinate these new pruning fashions with the traditional pruning has not been explored yet. This survey seeks to bridge the gap by proposing a general pruning framework so that the emerging pruning paradigms can be accommodated well with the traditional one. With it, we systematically reflect the major differences and new insights brought by these new pruning fashions, with representative works discussed at length. Finally, we summarize the open questions as worthy future directions.
Neural architecture search (NAS) with an accuracy predictor that predicts the accuracy of candidate architectures has drawn increasing attention due to its simplicity and effectiveness. Previous works usually employ neural network-based predictors which require more delicate design and are easy to overfit. Considering that most architectures are represented as sequences of discrete symbols which are more like tabular data and preferred by non-neural predictors, in this paper, we study an alternative approach which uses non-neural model for accuracy prediction. Specifically, as decision tree based models can better handle tabular data, we leverage gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) as the predictor for NAS. We demonstrate that the GBDT predictor can achieve comparable (if not better) prediction accuracy than neural network based predictors. Moreover, considering that a compact search space can ease the search process, we propose to prune the search space gradually according to important features derived from GBDT. In this way, NAS can be performed by first pruning the search space and then searching a neural architecture, which is more efficient and effective. Experiments on NASBench-101 and ImageNet demonstrate the effectiveness of using GBDT as predictor for NAS: (1) On NASBench-101, it is 22x, 8x, and 6x more sample efficient than random search, regularized evolution, and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) in finding the global optimum; (2) It achieves 24.2% top-1 error rate on ImageNet, and further achieves 23.4% top-1 error rate on ImageNet when enhanced with search space pruning. Code is provided at https://github.com/renqianluo/GBDT-NAS.
Several recent works [40, 24] observed an interesting phenomenon in neural network pruning: A larger finetuning learning rate can improve the final performance significantly. Unfortunately, the reason behind it remains elusive up to date. This paper is meant to explain it through the lens of dynamical isometry [42]. Specifically, we examine neural network pruning from an unusual perspective: pruning as initialization for finetuning, and ask whether the inherited weights serve as a good initialization for the finetuning? The insights from dynamical isometry suggest a negative answer. Despite its critical role, this issue has not been well-recognized by the community so far. In this paper, we will show the understanding of this problem is very important -- on top of explaining the aforementioned mystery about the larger finetuning rate, it also unveils the mystery about the value of pruning [5, 30]. Besides a clearer theoretical understanding of pruning, resolving the problem can also bring us considerable performance benefits in practice.